A Handbook of Korean Zen Practice : A Mirror on the Sŏn School of Buddhism (Sŏn’ga Kwigam)

Sŏn (Japanese Zen) has been the dominant form of Buddhism in Korea from medieval times to the present. __A Handbook of Korean Zen Practice: A Mirror on the Sŏn School of Buddhism__ (Sŏn'ga kwigam) was the most popular guide for Sŏn practice and life ever published in Korea and helped restore Buddhism to popularity after its lowest point in Korean history. It was compiled before 1569 by Sŏsan Hyujŏng (1520–1604), later famed as the leader of a monk army that helped defend Korea against a massive Japanese invasion in 1592. In addition to succinct quotations from sutras, the text also contained quotations from selected Chinese and Korean works together with Hyujŏng's explanations. Because of its brevity and organization, the work proved popular and was reprinted many times in Korea and Japan before 1909. __A Handbook of Korean Zen Practice__ commences with the ineffability of the enlightened state, and after a tour through doctrine and practice it returns to its starting point. The doctrinal rationale for practice that leads to enlightenment is based on the __Mahayana Awakening of Faith__, but the practice Hyujŏng enjoins readers to undertake is very different: a method of meditation derived from the __kongan__ (Japanese koan) called __hwadu__ (Chinese __huatou__), or "point of the story," the story being the __kongan__. This method was developed by Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) and was imported into Korea by Chinul (1158–1210). The most famous __hwadu__ is the __mu__ (no) answer by Zhaozhou to the question, "Does a dog have a buddha-nature?" Hyujŏng warns of pitfalls in this practice, such as the delusion that one is already enlightened. A proper understanding of doctrine is required before practicing __hwadu__. Practice also requires faith and an experienced teacher. Hyujŏng outlines the specifics of practice, such as rules of conduct and chanting and mindfulness of the Buddha, and stresses the requirements for living the life of a monk. At the end of the text he returns to the __hwadu__, the need for a teacher, and hence the importance of lineage. He sketches out the distinctive methods of practice of the chief Sŏn (Chinese Chan) lineages. His final warning is not to be attached to the text. The version of the text translated here is the earliest and the longest extant. It was "translated" into Korean from Chinese by one of Hyujŏng's students to aid Korean readers. The present volume contains a brief history of __hwadu__ practice and theory, a life of Hyujŏng, and a summary of the text, plus a detailed, annotated translation. It should be of interest to practitioners of meditation and students of East Asian Buddhism and Korean history.

Making the Modern Primitive provides an anthropological analysis of the encounter between local residents and tourists in the Trobriand Islands, a place renowned in anthropology and represented in various media as "culturally authentic." In such a place, how are ideas about authenticity implicated in creating and representing the self and cultural Others in the context of cultural tourism? Michelle MacCarthy addresses this question by examining four arenas of interaction between Trobriand Islanders and tourists: formal performances, informal village visits, souvenir shopping, and tourist photography. Drawing on both symbolic/interpretive approaches and concepts drawn from economic anthropology, she examines the relationship of tourism to the commoditization of culture, the ways in which local residents actively represent and enact "Trobriandness," and the ways tourists interpret and narrate their experience. MacCarthy offers an anthropological critique of concepts of authenticity, tradition, and cultural commodification, based on long-term fieldwork among Trobriand Islanders and tourists.

These notions, which have particular meanings as analytical concepts in anthropology, are also used and strategically deployed in the discourses of both Trobriand Islanders and tourists. Ideas about primitivity and cultural essentialism, while critiqued by anthropologists, are nonetheless used by both parties in tourism interactions to conceptualize and contextualize difference. MacCarthy demonstrate how such tropes are employed in ways that fit with prevailing metanarratives which each side holds about the other, and how these tropes are reproduced both in individual narratives of both tourists' and Trobrianders' experiences and in their interpretations (often misconstrued) of the lives of cultural Others with whom they interact. She examines the social dimensions of cross-cultural exchange in these four arenas (performance, village life, souvenirs, photography) to argue that cultural commodities are conceived of as singularities, a special category whose commodity status is downplayed in order to generate an increased sense of authenticity and to perpetuate the myth of a "primitive" economy and way of life more generally. In touristic encounters, experience itself is a sort of commodity, but relationships (real or imagined) are central to investing these experiences with meaning and value. This analysis contributes new understandings of the role and significance of authenticity in the anthropology of tourism, and its relationship to exchange; that is, how meaning and value are ascribed to the cultural products produced and consumed in the cultural tourism encounter with reference to ideas about what is and isn't authentic.

Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Translator’s Introduction Introduction Translation Appendix Sŏn’Ga Kwigam Texts Notes Bibliography Index About the Translator